Vegetable stir-fry, curry or similar should be easily do-able. There’s plenty of fresh veg that will keep long enough out of a fridge or canned asian veg is decent. Tomato or pesto pasta. Stew made with canned beef isn’t bad. Omlette.
Do you have a cool bag/box? Grab a bag of ice and you have a fridge for a few days. Even a plastic box would do the trick.
But unfortunately abuse creates deep insecurity, which creates a drive for power (control), so I think the OP isn’t far off the mark. Benevolent ruling is largely history washing imo, even if some good acts were carried out. The winner writes the history after all.
But your point is broadly fair - in most cases there is great variety in life. The ruling class, however, consists of less than 0.0001% of the global population so lies outside or the majority (figure made up for illustrstive purposes!).